John Nicholas Guidinger

John Nicholas Guidinger Published: December 7, 2003There's a present taking shape on the northern Milwaukee County line. It won't be ready for Christmas. In fact, it might not be completely wrapped for a few years to come.

But that gift, once its bow is in place, will delight thousands of Milwaukee area residents for as long as trees grow, flowers bloom and human beings crave contact with a creation not their own.

The gift in question is one square mile of land in the city of Mequon, and it's on the verge of a history-making transformation. Instead of moving from cornfields to condos -- a typical Mequon pattern -- the land is changing in the opposite direction, from farmland back to forest.

Designated Section 33 on the survey maps, the square mile's borders are County Line Road, Donges Bay Road, Wauwatosa Road (N. 76th St.) and Swan Road (N. 91st St.) The parcel lies just north of the former Northridge mall.

Section 33 would be unremarkable in, say, Dodge County, where the rural past has generally produced a rural present. But the section lies on the seam between city and suburb.

Mequon's subdivisions, soccer fields and light industries practically border the land on three sides, and the densely clustered rooftops of Milwaukee's Northridge area dominate its southern skyline.

In the midst of all this development, Section 33 has remained almost purely agricultural. Its survival to this late date is a minor miracle.

A high-powered partnership is working to make that miracle permanent. The City of Mequon and the Greater Milwaukee Foundation have joined forces with the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust to create the Mequon Nature Preserve.

More than 400 acres of the 640 proposed are already under protection. Linked informally with parkland on the Milwaukee side of the line, the completed preserve will cover more ground than Whitnall Park -- Milwaukee County's largest.

Leaders of the Mequon effort are interested in much more than preservation. Their goal is to restore the entire square mile to its native state.

What they want to do, in essence, is to reverse the flow of history, to turn the clock back nearly 170 years.

The clock started ticking in the 1830s, when the first white settlers arrived in Section 33. Ozaukee County was becoming an overwhelmingly German community, and the section fit the general pattern.

Families named Stauss, Junghaus, Guidinger, Gengler, Trassburger and Rosskopf were among the 19th-century settlers. Remarkably, the Stausses are still farming land their ancestors claimed in 1842 -- six generations ago.

The first Stausses and their fellow pioneers faced an unbroken forest of towering hardwoods: maple, beech, basswood, red oak, white ash, black cherry and a variety of other species.

Although they spared three wood lots (now the most attractive features of Section 33), trees were as much nuisance as resource. Most of the parcel was cleared as fast as the settlers could swing their axes.

Once the land was opened to the plow, agriculture followed a well-defined progression: first wheat, then diversified crops and, finally, in the late 1800s, dairy farming. In every stage, proximity to Milwaukee was a definite advantage. The 'Green Bay road,' now Highway 57, became a vital link between the farmers of Mequon and their primary market in the city.

Milwaukee, in the meantime, was slowly edging out toward Mequon. Decade by decade, home-seekers pushed to the north and west. The city limits approached Capitol Drive by 1910 and Silver Spring Drive 20 years later.

It was during the post-World War II boom that the outward wave finally reached the county line. Under Mayor Frank Zeidler, Milwaukee extended its borders to the edge of Mequon in 1956, absorbing the formerly rural Town of Granville.

As newcomers poured into the northwest side, farmers sold their dairy herds and subdivided their land. Those who wanted to keep farming moved north. The Bacher and Batzler families -- pillars of Granville for generations -- both crossed the Ozaukee County line and started over on Section 33.

There was even less room for farmers on the Milwaukee side of the border after 1969, when the Kohl family began to develop Northridge. It was envisioned as 'a city within a city,' with a regional shopping center and housing for 20,000 people. Satellite developments followed, including strip malls, subdivisions and the Alexian Village retirement community.

The idea for the Mequon Nature Preserve was hatched at Alexian Village. Richard Paddock, the retired chairman of Time Insurance, was standing at the window of his sixth-floor apartment one day, gazing out over the rolling fields of Section 33.

Wouldn't it be nice, he thought, if that land could be saved for future generations?

A $500,000 gift from Paddock's fund at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation got the ball rolling in 2000. It has been gathering speed ever since.

Mequon Mayor Christine Nuernberg, a civic sparkplug, has worn out at least one pair of shoes showing prospective donors around the parcel, and fund-raising efforts to date have netted more than $5 million.

The project's focus shifted early on from preservation to restoration -- and restoration in Section 33 means trees. Woodlots on the preserve will provide critical seed stock for the return of the broad-leaved natives. Land denatured by decades of agriculture will be ever so slowly renatured.

Mequon may be more able to afford a project of such scope than most communities, but the preserve will be a gift to everyone in metropolitan Milwaukee -- as critical habitat for sensitive species, as an open-air classroom for students of all ages and as a living link to the days when every Milwaukeean wore moccasins.

No one involved will live to see the preserve in its full glory, and that's what makes the effort so refreshing. At a time when people seem intent on starving their own governments to death, the preserve is a welcome sign that foresight, vision and creativity have not vanished from our public life.

In this season of giving, we can all be grateful that Mequon is making a present of the past.

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John Gurda is a Milwaukee historian who writes for Crossroads the first Sunday of every month.

Always a fanatic for details and a lover of art, Jon Guidinger, 41, probably died thinking no one would ever know what details he sneaked into the films he helped create.

His family remembers fondly, though, how closely he researched his own work, whether he was sketching, painting, creating bronze statuettes or sculpting sets for major motion pictures, and they certainly remember his sense of humor.

'When he was working on sculptures for (the 2001 film) 'The Mummy Returns,' he did all the research into the old alphabets, and he dutifully engraved each of those pillars in the temple,' Guidinger's younger brother, Craig, said. 'He'd come around talking about sun gods, telling me about the language: 'This word is for beer.' He was so proud of it all. I think in the end one of those pillars said, 'I love beer' in hieroglyphics.'

Guidinger died Feb. 3, two days after being rescued from a fire, which is still under investigation, in his Pittsburg home in the 2200 block of Fairbourne Drive. He'd been found in the kitchen, unburned but having succumbed to smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning, his family said. No arrangements for services have been set.

Guidinger left behind a body of work that included special effects, sculpting and other artistic contributions to movies like 'Starship Troopers,' 'War of the Worlds,' the 'Matrix' sequels and all three 'Star Wars' prequels. He did much of that work for George Lucas' famed specialAdvertisementeffects firm, Industrial Light & Magic, or ILM.

It was a job he'd gotten, almost miraculously, right out of art school, said Guidinger's father, Dewayne.

'George Lucas doesn't usually hire amateurs,' Dewayne Guidinger said with a plaintive chuckle, sitting in the yard behind his Concord home.

Behind him were half-burned, half-soaked photo albums laid out to dry in the sun, small pieces of wood laid between the pages to hold them apart. 'I don't know how Jon sold himself, whether it was persistence or what, but he did it.'

Christina Dominguez, who is engaged to Guidinger's brother Craig, recalled Guidinger certainly did have a dedication to conversation.

'He'd talk my face off for hours,' she said, adding with a wry smile, 'He was full of opinions and he loved to share.'

Guidinger had a competitive side, his brother said, but never let it overwhelm his love for his friends and family.

He paused to hold back tears. 'But if I had a question, if there was something I didn't know, I'd never hesitate to ask him, and he'd always try to help me out as much as he could. We're close, you know? He was a great brother.'

From the time he was young, Guidinger was never going to be a mathematician, his father said -- his passion for art emerged when he was young and remained the throughout his life. An early inspiration was sculptor Auguste Rodin, after whom Guidinger named his pet dog, a boxer called Rodi.

Guidinger father's descriptions evoke a sort of Peter Pan character, a man who steadfastly refused to give up on the fascinations that inspired him in childhood.

'He had so many grand ideas,' Dewayne Guidinger said. 'More ideas than he could ever produce into something to live on. If he called himself a starving artist, it was honestly earned.'

His son's time with ILM was like a dream come true, Dewayne Guidinger said, but the work dried up around 2005, and 'then there was a long span of harsh times, Jon doing odd jobs, but not enough to make a living at.'

Adding to that difficulty, 'as his friends grew up, got married and had kids, there was a certain kind of loneliness for him,' Dewayne Guidinger said. 'I think it was hard not to be able to spend time with his friends like he used to.'

Still, Guidinger remained dedicated to his craft, always in the middle of a sketch or a painting, or picking up a new skill -- he'd most recently returned to school, attending Los Medanos College in Pittsburg to develop welding skills.

'He always made you a birthday card by hand,' his brother Craig said. 'Even just writing notes to our mom, like, 'Hi, Mom, I'm at Dave's house,' next to it there would be a little picture he drew.'

Dominguez chimed in, 'He did it on recipes, too! He was a great cook, and there were little pictures of chefs and the food all over his recipes.'

Though his work helped create hugely successful films enjoyed by millions of people, Guidinger was never rich, and he never lived to see what his brother believes was among his highest goals: to see his artwork as an album cover.

'Before he died,' Craig Guidinger said, 'I know Jon had been in touch with an old friend from school who was in a band that was really making it happen, recording an album in the studio. They said they wanted to use his art and I mean, he was so excited. It's not out yet, and who knows. But it could still happen.' 04 FEB 2012. He was born on 17 October 1970. He was the son of Dewayne C Guidinger and Ruth Darden. Jon Paul Guidinger lived in 1994 at Contra Costa, California, USA.1 He died on 3 February 2012 at Contra Costa, California, USA, at age 41.

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Email me at: Jeffrey L. Guidinger, Cedarburg, WI